You may recall this story from around three years ago:
Among his suggestions are a proposal for a smoking permit, which smokers would have to produce when buying cigarettes, an “exercise hour” to be provided by all large companies for their employees and a ban on salt in processed food.
That was Julian Le Grand with his oxymoronic (emphasis on the moronic) suggestion for libertarian paternalism under which, smokers would have to have government issued licenses to smoke.
Well, never let it be said that a good idea ever goes to waste, for lo! Dick Puddlecote tells us of Simon Chapman down in the antipodes who has come up with the very same idea.
…over the weekend anti-tobacco campaigner and University of Sydney academic Simon Chapman turned up the heat with a new proposal to make smoking history, through creating a consumer license to smoke.
Under the proposal, a license would give the smoker a right to a limited quota of tobacco supply, say 10 cigarettes a day or 20 cigarettes a day and so on. There is a fee payable to government to give the consumer the right to use tobacco. The more tobacco the license holder pre-commits to smoke, the higher the license fee involved.
Under the licensing plan consumers would be asked to pass a test, ‘not dissimilar to a driving test’ Chapman stated, to qualify for a right to receive a license to legally purchase tobacco.
Thought transference or what, eh? And it will work, won’t it? I mean, people wouldn’t even contemplate baccy cruises to more liberal nations. Nor would they ever consider the thought of growing their own. I mean. alcohol prohibition in the US was such a roaring success wasn’t it? Well, it was for Al Capone, of course.
If this idea gets the go ahead and I’m not placing any bets against, then Australia will see an increase in smuggled tobacco with the dealers making a mint. And, of course, these people talk to each other and we will see someone picking it up and running with it over here – it has already been mooted by that illiberal bastard Julian Le Grand, so it’s just a matter of dusting it off and repackaging (in plain packing of course) it for the new overlords and away we go.
So, just as we will see Scots nipping across the border to England for cheaper booze, we will see Dover hitting saturation point as more and more take the relatively cheap crossing to Calais for their baccy.
None of this gets to the bottom of this though, and that is; someone’s decision to smoke tobacco or drink alcohol is no one’s concern but theirs. It is not a public health issue, it is a private health issue. And given that both groups pay an inordinate amount in taxes for their poison of choice, it is not up to government and most certainly not up to the zealous control freaks in the puritan lobby to have any say on their decisions whatsoever. No one forces the anti-smoker to smoke (unless you have fallen for the secondhand smoking canard – in which case, I have some snake oil you might be interested in), therefore, no one other than the smoker should be involved in their decision do indulge.
How much more of this before we finally say “no, enough!” to these people?